Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison

by Arthur Morrison

  He sat alone and glowered and smoked cigarettes for an hour and a half; a period of time which sufficed to relieve his disappointment, and arouse his interest in the very excellent dinner which was to follow. And the excellent dinner reconciled him to his circumstances so far that he began to congratulate himself on having very cleverly foiled a very desperate gang of conspirators. He fell to wondering when and how he should next hear of Lucia da Silva; and so, a little past nine o’clock, he made his way home on foot, rather better satisfied with himself, on the whole, that he had felt after any other dinner he could remember. For he had an idea that he had acquitted himself very well; and, indeed, it was a very jewel of an adventure.

  Once more next morning he endured the society of Mrs. Churcher after breakfast — the fog was even heavier, to-day — but there was no caller. None, indeed, till the afternoon, and then it was a messenger-boy, with a letter; a letter written on scented paper in violet ink, but scribbled so hurriedly that it was often difficult to separate words and sentences. This done, however, it read thus:

  MY DEAR FRIEND, — My brother and I cannot thank you enough for your generous kindness last night, which, alas, did not avail so effectually as we had hoped. The watching enemy were, as you know, two, and it would seem that only one followed us, leaving the other, the small, short man, to watch and confront my brother. This led to something which has altered our plans and makes us ask you for one favor more. Will you do it? Do not refuse after such kindness as you have shown. Will you go with a cab this evening at about six to the house we have left and bring away a large box? Enclosed is a note for the landlady, who will give you the box, and will hand you a hasty note of instructions I have left. Do not stay to read that note till you are in the cab and safely away with the box, and do not let the cab stand at the house longer than you can help. Also do not mention our real name to the landlady — you will understand that we have been obliged to conceal it. This time you will go to the front door, of course. Send me a note by this messenger saying that you will do this without fail.

  Ever yours gratefully and hopefully,. LUCIA

  Here was more food for Reginald’s romantic appetite, which was by no means sated yet, but rather sharpened by experience. He longed to learn what had happened as the result of the encounter of Luiz and his enemy, and how the plot stood now. So he sent by the messenger a hurried note that he would certainly and gladly do all that was asked of him, and addressed himself to preparations. Such an adventure!

  III

  IT was within a very few minutes of six that Reginald’s cab — this time a four-wheeler, because the box might be large — brought him once more to the house in Pentonville. There was some little difficulty in finding it, for the fog had been thickening all day. This he judged an advantage as regarded the removal of the boxa thing no doubt that would be better done unobserved.

  His knock brought to the door a very common-place general servant, who took the note, and presently returned with another, addressed in Lucia’s handwriting, to himself. Then she led him into a side room and shortly indicated the box by a jerk of the hand and a suggestion that he would find it “pretty heavy.”

  It was a larger box than he had expected, long and unwieldy, and more than he could carry by himself. So he called the cabman, and they found it no very easy carrying, together; the cabman, in fact, growling furiously.

  The box safely mounted on the roof, Reginald lost no time in entering the cab, giving the cabman the first direction for farringdon Road, that being the nearest main road he could think of at the moment. After an excruciating delay — the cabman was exasperatingly deliberate with his rug — they moved off, and Reginald pulled out his note of instructions. It was even more hurriedly scribbled, he noticed, than the letter he had received by the messenger-boy a few hours before, the words running on with scarcely a lift of the pen, and no punctuation at all. The streets were dark as well as foggy, and he could only catch a glimpse on the paper now and again as they passed a shop or an uncommonly bright street-lamp, and one or two of the more legible words started out and vanished again. “Waterloo Station” was clear, near the bottom, and higher up “trouble,” “difficulty,” and “remains.” At this last word Reginald sat up with an awful shock. Remains? What was in that heavy box on the roof?

  At this moment the cab emerged into a street so full of lighted shops that the whole note became plain; separating words and sentences with some difficulty, this is what he read:

  “Sorry to trouble, but difficulty with small man caused. Troublesome thing. We must remove remains in box. Trust you implicitly. Bring to York Road gate of Waterloo Station 6.30.”

  What words can paint the consternation of Reginald Drinkwater as he read this note? “We must remove remains in box!” This, then, was the event that had altered their plans and caused them “to ask one favor more.” The encounter in the fog between Luiz da Silva and his enemy had ended in the death of the small man, and here was he, Reginald Drinkwater, carrying the corpse across London in a cab!

  The callousness of the note, too! The “difficulty” with the small man had caused the trouble, and it — or he — was merely a “troublesome thing!” A truly Southern contempt of human life!

  As he sat, amazed and confounded, the cab pulled up in farringdon Road, and the driver, with growls from the box, invited further instructions.

  The interruption recalled Reginald to action. “The York Road gate of Waterloo Station,” he said, “as quick as you can get there!”

  For, indeed, this was all he could do. They trusted him; he had accepted the trust and had given his word, though he had never guessed what it involved. And after all, he reflected, this was a different thing, far from murder; nothing but simple self-defence. Though that consideration somehow made very little difference to the horror of the long box on the roof and what it held.

  The cab crawled and thumped and clattered through the fog, and Reginald prayed for the fog to thicken and so hide the ghastly box from human sight. And thicken it did, so that after a martyrdom of stopping and starting and crawling through farringdon Road and Street, the vehicle emerged from Ludgate Circus to encounter an increasing blackness in New Bridge Street. On it crept, close by the curb, and presently was lost in an immensity of mist, wherein nothing could be seen but nebulous light in distant random spots. They were making across the end of Queen Victoria Street for Blackfriars Bridge.

  The voyage across this smoky ocean seemed to be the longest stretch of the interminable journey. Once or twice the lights of some other vehicle neared and faded again, and shouts came from invisible depths; but the traffic hereabout was sparse just now. Reginald had begun to consider the possibility that the cab was making circles among the multitudinous crossings of these regions, when suddenly the horse stumbled and fell in a heap.

  The cabman made one roll of it out of his rug and off the box, and was dimly visible hauling at his horse’s head and clearly audible cursing its entire body. The horse, for its own part, seemed disposed to approve of the situation, and willingly to accept the opportunity for a prolonged rest. Blows and shouts, it would seem to reflect, were much the same, lying or standing, and lying was the easier posture.

  Reginald’s terrors increased tenfold; there would be a crowd, and a policeman, and the long box would be hauled down under general observation; and in his disordered memory the thing seemed now to have looked so like a stumpy coffin that he wondered he had not suspected it at once. He must, at any rate, keep it from the eye of a policeman.

  He scrambled out, and addressed the cabman. “If your horse is long getting up,” he said, “I’ll have another cab. I’m in a hurry.”

  “All right,” replied the cabman, extending his palm. “I’ve ‘ad enough of it, if you ‘ave. ‘E ain’t a easy one to get up, once ‘e’s down, an’ I b’lieve ‘is knees is cut. Gimme my fare.”

  Reginald hastily produced half a crown, and stood as firmly as he could while the man shoved the horrible box into his
arms, and then slung his end on the neighboring curb. Having done which the cabman turned his attention once more to his horse, leaving his late fare to wrestle his luggage across the pavement; for Reginald’s immediate purpose was to elude the eye of the policeman who must inevitably arrive to inspect the recumbent horse.

  Plainly the cab had strayed in the wide space before Blackfriars Bridge, and wandered diagonally across the approach; for now Reginald perceived that he had landed on the footpath of the Victoria Embankment. He pushed the box, end over end, into the darkest available spot under the parapet, and peered out into the choking fog in search of another cab.

  But very soon he began to understand that he was attempting something near an impossibility. A passing light in the wide, dark road was the most that could be seen of any cab, and each dash from the curb which he made only revealed that the cab was engaged. He began to grow seriously alarmed. He could not carry the thing — indeed he began to experience a growing repugnance to touch it or go near it — and there seemed to be positively no means of getting it to Waterloo. Moreover, the time appointed was already long overpast, and it was near seven.

  As he stood so, distractedly staring at the lights in the fog, a slow footstep approached, and a tall policeman came suddenly upon him out of the gloom, looking into his face as he passed — looking, as it seemed to Reginald’s uneasy perceptions, with an eye of inquiry and deep suspicion. Fortunately, the man saw nothing of the box lying close under the parapet, and vanished as suddenly as he had appeared, leaving Reginald in an agony of fear. What if the policeman had seen the box, and had asked questions? How account for his possession of the corpse of an unknown foreigner? Plainly something must be done, and at once.

  His first impulse, as soon as the policeman was gone, was to take to his heels, simply. But then he remembered the river, so close to hand. The plain object of Lucia and her brother must be to dispose of the body, somehow; and possibly by this time they had fled, alarmed at his non-arrival. In any case there was no visible means of bringing them the box, and he must act on his own account, before that policeman returned on his beat. He took one stealthy glance about him, raised an end of the box against the parapet, and with a great effort lifted the other end and pushed the thing forward till it balanced on the coping. Then with a final desperate shove he sent it tumbling into the black abyss before him, and ran his hardest.

  He soon found it needful to check his pace, however, and narrowly averted a collision with a tree as it was. He found that he had taken the direction along the Embankment, away from Blackfriars. That being so he must go over Waterloo Bridge to inform Lucia of the fate of the box, if she were still there. As he went he grew calmer, and presently saw, by aid of a lamp, that it was five minutes past seven. He crossed the road warily at the best-lighted place he could find, and made his best pace to keep his appointment.

  That dreary tramp seemed a week of groping hours, and he found himself doubting his watch when it indicated, in the light of the public-house at the corner of York Road, that he was little more than an hour late. He hastened on, and was barely emerging from the blackness beneath the railway-bridge when his arm was seized above the elbow, and Lucia stood before him.

  “Where is it? The box?” she demanded.

  “It’s all right — I’ve — I’ve got rid of it; I—”

  “Got rid of it? What d’you mean?” Surprise, alarm, and sharp suspicion were harsh in her voice.

  “Pitched it into the river. That was all I could do, you see, with—”

  “Pitched it into the river?” Her voice rose to a sort of hushed scream.

  “Yes. The cab broke down, and I had to get rid of the corpse somehow, and so — and so—”

  “Corpse? What corpse?”

  “In the box — the short man; the remains. It had to be got rid—”

  She snatched at his arm again and shook it. “Do you mean to tell me,” she hissed in his face, “that you’ve thrown that box into the river?”

  “Yes, certainly!”

  What followed Reginald will always find it difficult to describe, even if he should ever wish to remember it, which is doubtful. He was aware of a sudden torrent of a language which he was sure was not Portuguese, since he had heard it frequently at the Islington Cattle Market. Then something hard of Lucia’s — he could scarcely believe it was her fist took him suddenly on the left ear, and the lady herself, her skirts snatched up in her hands, vanished into the fog at a bolt, leaving him dumb and gasping, as well as a little deaf — on the left side.

  IV

  THAT evening in his rooms, amazed ‘and bewildered, Reginald Drinkwater pulled once again from his pocket the note of instructions he had received at Pentonville. The thing was most hastily scribbled, as though it were all one sentence; most of the words ran on without a break till they reached the end of the line, and yet the meaning seemed quite clear. The punctuation he had supplied himself, and now he could see no better arrangement. “We must remove remains in box.” That was plain enough; certainly plain enough. And then, suddenly, as by a flash of inspiration, he saw the thing in quite a different reading. The word “caused” ended the first line, and “troublesome thing” began the second. But hereabout the words were all joined, and if only the “some” were tacked on to “thing” instead of “trouble” — and there was no reason why it should not be — the whole meaning was changed. “Difficulty with small man caused trouble,” it would read, and then, “something we must remove remains in box.” Something we must remove remains in box!

  Mouth and eyes and fingers all opened together, and the paper fell between his knees as this amazing explanation presented itself. Then there was no body! No one was killed! He had only been sent to Pentonville because “something we must remove remains in box!” Great heavens! what had he flung into the river?

  He picked the paper up and read it once more, and the new reading stared at him plainer than ever. What had he done? He could understand now, dimly, that Lucia probably had reasons for her amazement and anger. But then that language — worse, that punch! What did it all mean?

  He gasped and wondered for two days, and then Buss, K.C., returned from his little holiday. Reginald’s attention was attracted to his neighbor by a sudden howl and a series of appalling bellows, accompanied by frantic rushings to and fro, bangings of doors and shoutings on stairs. Then, after an interval, Reginald, still curious, perceived the head of an inspector of police at the nearest open window of Buss, K.C. And after another interval that same inspector presented himself at the rooms of Mr. Reginald Drinkwater. Mr. Buss’s rooms had been entered and robbed during his absence from town, and the entry had been effected, in the judgment of the police, through the window in the corner, by some person crossing from Mr. Drinkwater’s window. Of course the inspector didn’t wish to say or do anything unpleasant, and no doubt investigations would put things in a different light; but for the present — !

  And so it came about that the Drinkwater romance was first poured into the unenthusiastic ears of the police; and that some of the most valuable of the Buss silver was dragged and dived for in the Thames near Blackfriars under the joint direction of the police and Mr. Drink-water himself.

  “Yes,” observed the inspector, some days after his first visit, when Mr. Drinkwater’s bona fides had been quite established— “yes, sir, it’s just their sort o’ job. Lucia da Silva she called herself this time, did she? It’s a very pretty name. She’s had a lot of ‘em at one time or another, but I never heard that before. She’s been Spanish an’ she’s been Italian an’ she’s been Greek — this Portuguese dodge is fresh; nothing like being up-to-date, I suppose. Bit of a sheeny, really, I believe. Yes. It’s she’s the smart one; he’s got ideas, but he funks the work. You see she did it all in this job. Came to try and fit keys to your door when you were out — that was when you surprised her. Her fright was real enough, of course, when you turned up, but she was smart enough to turn it to her own account. You see, Mr. Buss�
�s doors would be a harder job than yours — he’s had patent locks put on ‘em, inside and out, an’ no doubt they knew it.

  “Wonderful quick she was with her yarn, wasn’t she? She’s a topper. Knew how to adapt it, too, you see. It was when she got you safe off in the Café Royal they did it. Did it together, with the keys they’d made from the waxes she got from your laundress’s bunch when she came the day before, and you were out. These women shouldn’t leave keys about like that, though they always do. Yes, she did it smart all through — I always admired that gal. Not least smart was getting you to bring the stuff along after they’d left their lodgings. I think I know why that was. It was him funking it again — he’s always a funk, fortunately, in these jobs. Thought we’d got an eye on the house, which we hadn’t, because it’s quite a respectable place, and we’d lost sight of him lately. But see the neatness of it, getting you to carry the stuff. If we had been watching the house, or if you’d’ been stopped on the way, you’d have been in the soup, not them. Found with the goods on you, you see, sir, and the burglary done from your rooms! Eh? Oh, very neat. But there — I’ve got one joke against her, when I find her; that note that queered the game. That is rich. ‘Remains,’ eh? ‘Remains in box!’ We must explain that to her, when we get her! ‘Remains,’ eh? Ha! ha!”

  “Ha! ha!” repeated Reginald — a sickly echo. “Yes, quite a joke — against her!”

  THE END

  FIDDLE O’DREAMS AND MORE

  CONTENTS

  MR. WALKER’S AEROPLANE

  LIES UNREGISTERED

  FIDDLE O’ DREAMS

  A PROFESSIONAL EPISODE

  BYLESTONES

  THE FOUR-WANT WAY

  THE THING IN THE UPPER ROOM

  MYXOMYCETES

  SPORTS OF MUGBY